Testing of each of the 12 lower-end firewalls in terms of management entailed an evaluation of "ease of policy, its creation and deployment," says Bob Walder, president and COO at NSS Labs, who said the tests are designed to be "scientific and objective as we can."

Although some firewalls today are considered "application-aware," NSS Labs did not test that capability. Rather, it stuck to IP-based protections expected from a traditional firewall, Walder says. Products tested were:

Barracuda F800

Check Point 12600

Cyberoam CR2500iNG

Dell SonicWALL NSA 4500

Fortinet FortiGate-800c

Juniper SRX550

NETASQ ng1000-A

NETGEAR ProSecure UTM9S

Palo Alto Networks PA-5020

Sophos UTM 425

Stonesoft FW-1301

WatchGuard XTM 1050

Most of the firewall gear performed well, with the Check Point, Fortinet, Juniper and Stonesoft products earning the highest overall "recommended" ratings relative to combined protection and value. The NETGEAR box brought up the rear, with scores of 40% for "stability and reliability," 28% for "security effectiveness," 15% on "management capabilities" and 4% on "weighted security effectiveness/management."